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33 harmonizing our wills completely with the Divine idea of the whole undertaking, and of mastering all the knowledge which it is possible for us to acquire when our natures are adequately exalted by that process, is one which may be protracted over the whole range of those millions of ages. We shall gather more as we go on concerning the circumstances under which it is so protracted, but taken as slowly as Nature allows for, or as rapidly as the process can be hastened, nothing can be achieved from the middle point of the manvantara onwards unless a comprehension of what is to be done animates each effort at every stage. That is the all-essential idea to keep hold of in contemplating the prospects of humanity. The nature of the attain- ments possible eventually, will be considered more conveniently at a later stage of the inquiry. 34 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. CHAPTER II. OCCULT SCIENCE AND RELIGION. At the outset of any serious attempt to comprehend Theosophic teaching concerning the growth of the soul, it is well worth while to dissipate the foolish delusion that such teaching is at war with religion, and based upon a Godless and Atheistic system of thought. Theosophy is so far from deserving that reproach that it even brings into sympathy with all essential religious ideas, those of its followers who, repelled in the first instance by the unsatisfactory creeds in which religion has so often been disguised by ecclesiastical systeins, have approached it from the point of view of Agnostic or even Atheistic thinking. Occult science enables us to define clearly before the mind’s eye the goal at which humanity has to aim. Religious faith, it may be urged, does this also, no matter with what varieties of creed it may be associated. It points to a happy spiritual life of a refined order as a reward for piety and blameless conduct. But that is not a “clearly defined’ goal, because the conditions of such superior existence are never explained in sacred writings with exactitude. The Theosophic exposition of spiritual science, on the other hand, shows quite definitely the conditions of spiritual existence which OCCULT SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 35 ensue as a consequence of simple piety and blameless life, and also the still higher conditions that may be attainable for those who ute with the utmost attain- able blamelessness, adequate knowledge concerning the scope and possibilities of human existence, and who, guiding their conduct by the light of that knowledge, bring themselves so far into harmony with the loftiest principles governing the evolution of the world, as to rise in the scale of creation, and take their places in that sphere of existence which, as compared wifh the king- dom of humanity, might be termed the kingdom of divinity. Before going further let me expand this contrast a little. For one very common mistake made about Theosophic teaching by people who begin to appreciate its ethical tendencies, is that, after’ all, it only repeats familiar Christian exhortations in a new form of words, dropping out the ecclesiastical phraseology. In spite of the painful pretences of precision which distinguish the anthropomorphic formulas of modern churches, the philosophical literature of modern thought is saturated with the conviction that the conditions of physical life hopelessly deny us exact knowledge in reference to the hereafter. ‘“‘ The bourne from which no traveller returns’”’ is a region which Shakespeare, even though presenting us in the same breath with a traveller who does return from it, recognises as shrouded in impenetrable darkness. Tennyson cannot give, by the Voice of Faith, any more definite information con- cerning the future than is conveyed in the “ notice faintly understood,” which embodies the encourage- 36 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. ment of “a hidden hope.” The leading exponents of modern knowledge concerning physical nature are bitter in their repudiation of the theory that it is possible to get touch with positive facts having to do with non-carnate conditions of consciousness. With eighteen centuries to work in, the Christian churches have finally produced, as the result of their teaching, the assured conviction on the part of their most intel- lectual pupils, that there is nothing to be known, however much to be hoped for, along that road. Reasonable conjectures, pointing to a superphysical intelligence and consciousness of some sort governing the world, there may be, but of real knowledge, such as that we have about the planetary movements or the molecular constitution of matter, there is none attain- able. Samuel Laing, summing up the conclusions of Modern Thought, writes: “‘As far as our experience and knowledge extend, this life of conscious personal identity is indissolubly connected with a material organ—the brain. . . . What will become of it when the brain is dissolved into its elements ? No voice comes from beyond the grave to tell us. It is the mystery of mysteries.” And the authors of ‘‘ The Unseen Universe,” though their whole book presents itself as an attempt to argne that there may be an unseen universe and some avenue that may at last lead from the seen to the unseen, conceive that up to now this avenue “ has unfortunately been walled up and ticketed with ‘ No voad this way.’” “In fine,” they say elsewhere, “‘ the unseen may have OCCULT SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 37 a very wide field of influence, but from its very nature its working is not discernible, and we are therefore led to consult the Christian records for otherwise unattain- able information regarding the reality of a present influence exercised by the invisible universe upon ours.” As for the fate of evil doers, “We greatly question whether any school of theologians have succeeded in throwing a single ray of real light into this mysterious region.” The whole body of Theosophic teaching on the contrary rests on the confident declaration that an immense volume of real knowledge, quite as precise and certain as that we possess about the movements of the planets, or the behaviour of molecules, is attain- able and has been attained in reference to superphysical conditions of human consciousness, the natural laws which govern the transition of human consciousness from one sphere or plane of Nature to another, and the conditions of existence which belong to other Beings, some higher than, some lower than the humanity of which we have cognisance on this earth. But when the practical bearing of this knowledge on human conduct during incarnate life is brought down to an every-day level, undoubtedly it is found that in many respects the ethics of exact spiritual science are identical with the ethics of the inexact, however ardent, aspira- tions of religion. That is in no way surprising for students of Theosophy who come to realise that all religion worthy of the name has grown out of spiritual science as existing in the world at the period of such gtowth. Religions prepared by the various great 38 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. teachers and prophets of mankind for propagation in the world at large, are in all cases excerpts clothed in a more or less elaborate symbolism, from the great body of definite scientific knowledge concerning the spiritual laws and purpose of the world possessed by the initiates for the time being of esoteric wisdom. The identity, however, of ordinary religious and theosophic ethics up to a certain point in no way lessens the importance of the additional spiritual guidance to be derived from the knowledge of theosophic doctrine. The acquisition of that knowledge at one stage or another of human progress is an absolute condition, sine gud non, for the attainment of the grander possibilities of that progress. The good life per se will lead to happiness hereafter, as the most popular forms of religious teaching very fairly declare. The ideas associated with religious piety, if welded with that good life, will colour the happiness to which it leads and determine its character and kind. But the good life per se leads to nothing more than happiness, and not even to an eternity of that. ‘To rise in the scale of Nature and get above the conditions of transitoriness that beset all phases of consciousness of the merely human Kingdom, whether incarnate or disincarnate, we must make specific efforts of a kind that can only be made by virtue of knowledge con- cerning the higher spiritual laws of Nature. These are vague phrases till they are brought to a focus by an exposition of the great and magnificent discoveries concerning the dormant spiritual faculties of humanity and the phases of Nature suitable to their OCCULT SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 39 expansion, which some advanced representatives of humanity in all ages of the world since the human epoch began, have been enabled to make. When churches or sects—with their hundreds of divergent creeds—make definite statements of fact concerning the destinies of humanity which can be shown to have arisen from some unintelligent material- isation of an allegory, or from a grovelling, anthropo- morphic conception of the principles on which the world is governed, theosophical teaching will naturally endeavour to break through such incrustations of error ; but the religious instinct or sentiment itself is so fundamentally identical with the theosophical instinct or sentiment, that to suppose the one hostile to the other is to misunderstand the position entirely. It is quite true, more’s the pity, that much genuine religious sentiment is often blended with limited sectarian bigotry.